We have a long and proud history of supporting refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in our borough. Back in December 2022, we Waltham Forest Labour Councillors passed a Council motion declaring our ambition to become a Borough of Sanctuary. Within that motion we committed to work with our amazing community and faith organisations, our schools and our health partners to welcome and support all people seeking sanctuary in the borough and always challenge anti-migrant sentiment.

We also pledged to find more opportunities across the Council to celebrate our migrant communities, tell their stories and promote their voices and to challenge hate. We promised to join campaigns to end the Hostile Environment policy, call to end the Rwanda scheme and support those impacted by the Windrush scandal.

Waltham Forest Council supported many asylum seekers who were placed into Home Office hotels in the borough, with a day to day presence in the hotels. We were deeply concerned by safeguarding concerns, which we raised consistently with the Conservative government to ensure children and vulnerable adults were safe and supported.

Since November 2022, we have written to government setting out deep concerns about the support and care provided to those settled in hotels in the borough. We have raised concerns about the safety and wellbeing of people housed in local hotels, the reduction of oversight over the use of HMOs to house asylum seekers, a lack of safeguarding for vulnerable children and adults in the hotels and concerns around the way asylum seekers were evicted from hotels with very little notice, as well as the lack of coordinated support to find people accommodation.

Since we passed that motion, the Council has worked with our partners to to welcome refugees, asylum seekers and migrants to our borough. We received confirmation of our status as a Borough of Sanctuary in December 2023 on the same day that we opened our Welcome Hub, which provides a source of support for residents from refugee and migrant backgrounds.

We continue to stand together as a community as a place of welcome and support. We welcome the new Government’s promise to work in partnership with Local Authorities to support refugees, asylum seekers and migrants and we will continue to use our voice to represent some of the most vulnerable in our community.